Part of the pitch of AI companies is that they mediate and provide a new surface for ads, for taking an affiliate cut of sales, etc.

But it isn't like this hasn't been the long-running strategy for Google as well - provide more results on search so that people don't go to the site with ads, provide paid product results for shopping, to offer more services to keep people providing personal/behavioral queues to Google and more opportunities for ad placement.

If anything, AI turned up the heat such that the frog noticed what temperature the pot was. But that doesn't really put them in a better position to execute than Google.